LIVE THE RIDE!!

OK, normally I reserve promotional space on this blog for my own productions, but this is too funny not to share. The second paragraph, in particular, kills me.

(Minneapolis, MN): Point Break LIVE!, the absurdist stage adaptation of the 1992 Keanu Reeves extreme-sports blockbuster, surfs into the Bryant Lake Bowl for an exclusive two-week engagement starting Thursday, January 20, 2005. The show, which garnered a “Seattle P-I Best of Seattle 2004” award, tells the story of former College football star Johnny Utah—Keanu Reeves in the film—in pursuit of the bankrobbing, skydiving, bare-hand-fighting adrenaline-junkie-cum-Zen-master Bodhi Sattva (Patrick Swayze—here played by Gearick Matthies), and features armed robbery, big-wave surfing, car chases, explosions, and no less than two extended skydiving sequences. Best of all, the starring role of Keanu will be selected at random from the audience each night, and will read their entire script off of cue-cards. “Keanu Reeves roles demand a special kind of acting: Essentially, in every scene, you have to look like you've just been dropped into a room and you have no idea what's going on,” notes director Jamie Hook. We have tried very hard to cultivate that Deer-caught-in-the-headlights quality that is an essential part of the Point Break experience with cue-cards.” This method manages to capture the rawness of a Keanu Reeves performance even from those who generally think themselves incapable of acting.

More than a mere entertainment, Point Break LIVE! is also conceived as a reaction to the dead, bourgeois affect that passes for live-theatre in this shit-hole town. Notes Hook, “Most theatres like the Guthrie don’t mount blockbusters not because they don’t want to—secretly, everyone, from Joe Dowling to August Wilson wants to be an action director. The real reason Hollywood is kicking Minneapolis’ ass is that our theatre directors have forgotten the lessons of the Greeks and are wasting our time with hollow, meaningless drivel about the meaning of life instead of offering us straight-up, gut-wrenching action. Point Break LIVE! intends to change all that,” Hook notes. “What our play offers is a true cathartic experience: We’re going to put you in the water with the surfers. We’re going to throw you out the door of a moving aeroplane. We’re going to rob you at gunpoint. You won’t even know you are in a theatre.”

Seriously, doesn't that sound awesome?